The current version has been modified for presentation on the WWW. This has meant making compromises in the presentation of accented characters, etc., and may have introduced typographical
errors. Finally, the original article included graphical representations of characters from Brāhmī, Kharoṣṭhī, Aramaic, Greek, etc., which have all been reduced here to the placeholder
"¤".

Readers are referred to the published version of this paper in the JAOS for full accuracy and citation.)

Several recent publications have questioned prevailing doctrines and offered new views on the antiquity of writing in early India and on the source and early development of the Indian
scripts (Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī). Most of the new studies agree in assigning the origin of these scripts to a later period, i.e. the early Mauryan era (late 4th - mid 3rd centuries BC),
than has generally been done in the past, and in deriving them from prototypes in Semitic or Semitic-derived scripts. The main works to be evaluated here are Oskar von Hinüber's
Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien and Harry Falk's Schrift im alten Indien. Ein Forschungsbericht mit Anmerkungen . [2] Also discussed are two recent articles on similar topics, Gérard Fussman's "Les
premiers systèmes d'écriture en Inde" [3] and Kenneth R. Norman's
"The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pāli Canon," [4] as
well as some other relevant publications. The authority and significance of this new trend toward assigning a late date of origin for the Indian scripts is evaluated and placed in the
context of broader historical and cultural issues.

The development and early history of writing in India of the historical period (i.e. after the time of the Indus Valley Civilization) has long been a controversial problem. Basically, arguments
turn around three main issues:

The sources and origins of the Indian scripts of the historical period, i.e. Kharoṣṭhī and especially Brāhmī.

The date at which these scripts, or their prototypes, first came into use.

The relationship, if any, of the historical scripts to the writing of the proto-historic Indus Valley Civilization and the explanation of the long gap between them during which writing
appears to have fallen out of use in India.

The principal reasons that these issues, particularly the second, are so problematic are:

There are no securely datable specimens of writing from the historical period earlier than the rock inscriptions of Ashoka from the mid-3rd century BC. Other early inscriptions which have
been proposed by various authors as examples of pre-Ashokan writing are of uncertain date at best.

The external testimony from literary and other sources on the use of writing in pre-Ashokan India is vague and inconclusive. Alleged evidence of pre-Mauryan writing has in the past been
found by various scholars in such sources as later Vedic literature, the Pali canon, the early Sanskrit grammatical treatises of Pāṇini's and his successors, and the works of
European classical historians. But all of these references are subject in varying degrees to chronological or interpretive problems.

Until recently, the received opinions on these issues, in the west at least, have mainly been based on or at least strongly affected by their explication by Georg Bühler fully one century ago
in his highly influential, if somewhat controversial monograph On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet (Indian Studies No.III) . [5] Bühler argued for an early origin of writing in India and posited an extensive pre-history, going as far back as the 8th century BC,
for the Brāhmī script, which he derived from the Phoenician script. Although more recent writers such as David Diringer [6] have tended to doubt such an early date for Brāhmī and have looked to the Aramaic rather than the Phoenician script as its probable source, Bühler's materials
and arguments have continued to guide the discussion long after many of them have become outdated (Falk, p.11). The arguments of specialists have largely focussed on evaluations, criticisms,
and modifications of Bühler, while presentations by non-Indologists such as Diringer and Hans Jensen [7]
in their general works on the history of writing have relied heavily and often uncritically and inaccurately on him (see e.g. Falk pp.96, 123). In general, some form or other of
Bühler's essential thesis that Brāhmī was developed out of a Semitic prototype in pre-Mauryan India has been accepted by most scholars in the west, but rejected by the majority of
South Asian experts, who generally argue for a separate and indigenous origin for the Indic scripts, often by way of derivation, direct or indirect, from the Indus script.

But what virtually all of these voices have in common is a focus, whether favorable or critical, on the arguments presented by Bühler a century ago. It is thus appropriate and important that
the authors of the publications under discussion here, in particular Harry Falk, have finally freed themselves from the shackles of the tired old arguments and undertaken an entirely new look
at these issues in light of what we know now of Indian chronology, epigraphy, numismatics, and linguistic and literary history. Although no single decisive document, such as the long-awaited
certifiably pre-Mauryan Brāhmī inscription, has come to light since Bühler's time, a vast amount of new material and a far better understanding of what was previously known are now at
our disposal. Major discoveries since Bühler's day include the Aramaic and Greek inscriptions of the time of Ashoka from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the very existence of the Indus
Valley civilization. Among the improved analyses of earlier materials are a better (though still far from complete) understanding of the chronological development of textual corpora such as
the Veda and the Pali canon, and a clearer and more cautious methodology for the paleographic dating of inscriptions.

Previous discussions have also been hampered by a chronic lack of communication and understanding between Indologists on the one hand and Semiticists and other scholars of the history of
writing on the other. The former, for the most part, had little or no knowledge of the relevant branches of Semitic epigraphy, while the latter typically had even less awareness of matters
Indian (whence their often uncritical reliance, alluded to above, on Bühler). Here too a major step forward has been achieved in that our new authors, and once again Falk in particular, have
taken the trouble to familiarize themselves with Semitic scripts, especially Aramaic, in such a way that the possible connections can at last be discussed in an intelligent and objective
manner.

The major conclusion shared by the studies of Fussman, von Hinüber, and Falk is that at least the Brāhmī script, and possibly also Kharoṣṭhī, originated in the Mauryan period and not earlier.
Although they disagree in specifics, especially with regard to the date of the development of Brāhmī, all three agree that Kharoṣṭhī, which was a regional script of the far northwest, was
older than the pan-Indian Brāhmī and influenced its formation. The three authors share a sharp skepticism about alleged literary evidence for writing in pre-Ashokan India, and are inclined to
interpret the situation empirically, on the grounds of what we definitely know, rather than speculating on what might have been. They are inclined to take the absence of incontrovertible
evidence for early writing as an indication that it did not exist, rather than, as have earlier writers, adding up the bits of inconclusive hints and theoretical possibilities to reconstruct a
hypothetical pre-history for the early scripts.

Among the four studies discussed here, only Kenneth R. Norman's article on "The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pāli Canon" follows a more
traditional path. He analyzes certain patterns of textual variation in Pali texts (e.g. hatthivattika / hattivatika , pp.239--40, and samaya / samâja ,
p.241) which seem to reflect an early redaction in a script which did not represent geminate consonants or differentiate vowel length, and identifies this script as an early prototype of
Brāhmī used in Magadha in pre-Mauryan times (p.243). Norman finds it "difficult to accept that Brāhmī was devised as a single complete writing system at one and the same time during
the reign of Candragupta" (p.245), [8] and considers it "even less likely that Brāhmī
was invented at the time of Ashoka for the specific purpose of writing his inscriptions" (p.246). His objections to what may be referred to as the "invention theory"
of the origin of Brāhmī mainly concern the irregularities and inconsistencies of the graphic system, for instance inconsistencies in the formation of the graphs for aspirate consonants, some
of which are clearly based on the corresponding non-aspirates (e.g. ¤ .ta and ¤ .tha ) while others (e.g. ¤ ta and ¤ tha [not cited by Norman]) are not so
derivable. Such patterns lead Norman to conclude that Brāhmī " evolved [my emphasis] in a haphazard way, with some of its ak.sara s being borrowed from some other
source" (p.245).

But von Hinüber in Der Beginn der Schrift... interprets the patterns of textual variation in Pali which underlie Norman's theory quite differently, noting that geminate
consonants were still not regularly noted in Indian inscriptions of the 1st century BC when the Pali texts were presumably first written down (p.64), and that long â was often left unindicated
in early Brāhmī inscriptions from Sri Lanka (p.66). Von Hinüber's arguments are persuasive if we can assume that the orthographic standards of early inscriptions also prevailed in
contemporary (i.e. pre-Christian era) religious or literary texts in manuscript form. However, although we do not have any manuscripts this old, it is not impossible that stricter orthographic
standards, including the notation of geminates, might have applied in them, in contrast to the standards of inscriptions which at this period were often still treated quite casually in terms
of orthography and layout. Nonetheless, it must be conceded that Norman's arguments rest on a largely hypothetical basis and that underlying orthographic inconsistencies reflected in
much later manuscripts of the Pali canon are hardly cogent grounds for the reconstruction of a proto-Brāhmī of the pre-Mauryan era. Norman's position is essentially an affirmation of
the more moderate version of the old school of thought, which places the origin of Brāhmī in or around the 5th century BC. But his arguments for such a position, like the those of others to be
discussed below, are cast into doubt by the three other new studies.

Though developed most cogently and completely in these three new publications, the theory of a relatively late (i.e. Mauryan) date for Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī and the postulation of the former
as an "invention" under the stimulus of one or the other of the Mauryan emperors is by no means entirely new. For instance, as noted by Falk (p.163), Max Muller in 1892
(before Bühler!) opined that Brāhmī was probably "das Werk einer Kommission von Gelehrten, die, wahrscheinlich im Auftrage des Königs [Ashoka], aus fremden Quellen ein Alphabet
entwarfen,...die Laute der gesprochenen Sprache auszudrücken." The old invention theory, which had largely fallen out of favor after Bühler, were revived by S.R. Goyal in 1979 in his
essay "Brāhmī- An Invention of the Early Mauryan Period," [9] who argued
"that the Brāhmī script was invented in the first half of the third century B.C., and that the Indians of the Vedic and early Buddhist periods were illiterate" (p.4), and
that "in all probability Brāhmī was invented in the age of Ashoka and the idea...of writing came from the west" (p.17). Though not entirely original, the data and arguments
invoked by Goyal-- the persistent failure of efforts to find and identify actual specimens of pre-Ashokan writing, the testimony of Greek authors (especially Megasthenes) to the absence of
writing in India in the early Mauryan period, the evident influence of Indian phonetic and grammatical theory on the structure of the early scripts, and the primitive and uniform appearance of
Ashokan Brāhmī-- prefigure the postions developed at greater length in the newer works. Goyal's essay seems to have served as a stimulus to the recent re-thinking of and revival of
interest in these questions, and his essay should be (re-)read in conjunction with those being reviewed here.

Turning now to these new publications, in chronological order: Gérard Fussman in "Les premiers systèmes d'écriture en Inde" briefly [10] argues (pp.513--4) that the Kharoṣṭhī script developed in the northwest before the Mauryan
empire and provided both the model and inspiration for the development of Brāhmī. This creation was undertaken, probably during the time of Candragupta Maurya, in order to serve administrative
needs in Magadha, and was carried out by "pandits qui furent chargés de créer une écriture pur une région de l'Inde qui ne la connaissait pas" (p.514).
Fussman's grounds for this chronological reconstruction are principally the testimony of the Greek historians; for while there are references to writing, presumably Kharoṣṭhī, in the
northwest at the time of Alexander the Great, Megasthenes, who lived in Pâ.taliputra late in the fourth century BC, declared the Indians to have no writing at all. Fussman admits the
"faiblesse intrinsèque" of these sources, but declares that they "se combine pourtant de fa,con à former un faisceau de présomptions acceptables" (p.513).
Brāhmī, he concludes, is "héritière de l'Iran pour l'idée, tributaire des premiers modèles araméens et araméo-indiens pour sa technique, purement indienne en ce qui
concerne sa lisibilité et son adéquation à la langue" (p.514).

In his view of Brāhmī as an artifical conglomerate of Iranian, Semitic, and Indian elements Fussman is in general agreement with von Hinüber and Falk, although his chronology differs,
particularly with respect to the time of its development, which they are inclined to attribute to Ashoka rather than to Candragupta. In his monograph on Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe
Schriftlichkeit in Indien , von Hinüber carefully re-examines the principal sources which have been invoked by earlier scholars in their efforts to prove the existence of writing in
pre-Mauryan India, and finds that none of them stand the test: "Fremde Beobachtungen sprechen also in Übereinstimmung mit den Zeugnissen aus Epigraphik und Numismatik eindeutig dafür,
daß es in Indien vor Ashoka keine Schrift gegeben hat, wenn man von den indischen Provinzen des Achämenidenreiches absieht" (p.22; cf. also p.72). For example, his analysis of
Megasthenes' alleged references to Indian writing (Ch.4) leads him to the conclusion (p.20) that the only authentic one is his statement that they have none (["oude gar
grammata eidenai autous" in Greek characters]). This he interprets as a blanket denial, rejecting the interpretation of J.D.M. Derrett and others that it refers only to written
documents in connection with legal procedures, which are the immediate context of Megasthenes' discussion. As for the reference by Nearchos, quoted by Strabo, to the Indians'
practice of writing letters ([" epistolas " in Greek characters] on cloth, he considers it "sehr wohl möglich, daß Nearch iranische, d.h. wohl aramäische
Briefe meint, wenn er 'indischen' spricht, weil er sie eben in Indien gesehen hat" (p.21). Similarly, he suggests that the lipi mentioned by Pāṇin(3.2.21),
if it really refers to a 'script' at all, must be either "eine sehr frühe Form der KharoṣṭhīSchrift," or Aramaic (p.58); but he also suggests that the word
lipi here may not refer to writing at all, but rather to painting or the like (p.57).

However, the main focus, comprising 6 of 15 short chapters, of von Hinüber's discussion is the references, real or apparent, to writing in the Pali canon, especially in the
Vinaya-pi.taka. Here he explains at some length (including several highly technical excursuses) that terms such the verb likh and its derivatives either do not actually refer to
writing, or, if they do, are attributable to later strata of the Vinaya literature (pp.36--40), which in any case reflects on the whole a later stage of development than the Sutta-pi.taka
(pp.46--54).

Thus von Hinüber finds no cogent evidence whatsoever for any kind of writing in the Indian heartland in the early Buddhist era or at any other time in the pre-Mauryan period. The creation of
Brāhmī thus evidently took place during the Mauryan era, with the erstwhile Achaemenian model of Old Persian Cuneiform as the inspiration for the creation a new "imperial"
script, and with Kharoṣṭhī as a systemic model: "Die Zentralverwaltung des Maurya-Reiches könnte also in der Phonetik bewanderte Brahmanen mit dem Einwurf einer neuen, für eine
monumentale Epigraphik besser als die Kharoṣṭhī-Schrift geeignten und zugleich dem Bedürfnis nach einer leichteren Deutbarkeit des Geschriebenen entgegenkommenden Scrift beauftragt
haben" (p.59). This undertaking is attributed by von Hinüber, somewhat cautiously (p.60), to Ashoka himself.

Many of the themes introduced and discussed, if somewhat cursorily, by von Hinüber are taken up again in greater detail by Harry Falk in his much more voluminous study of Schrift im alten
Indien . The connections are no doubt to be explained by the authors' common participation in Sonderforschungsbereich 321, "Übergänge und Spannungsfelder zwischen
Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit" at the University of Freiburg. Von Hinüber himself (Vorbemerkung, p.5) refers his readers to the then-forthcoming report of Falk for a more
comprehensive study, and Falk (p.12) acknowledges the "sehr Fruchtbar" exchanges with von Hinüber. This is not to say, however, that the two publications are repetitive or
imitative of each other. For although they do reflect generally similar points of view and come to substantially the same conclusions, they cover different ground, present different modes of
argumentation on some issues, and disagree significantly, if not fundamentally, on several important specific questions.

As the subtitle ( Ein Forschungsbericht mit Anmerkungen ) indicates, Falk's study is arranged in the form of a comprehensive review in chronological order of all the scholarly
literature on issues relevant to the origin and early development of writing in India. The summaries of previous writing are supplemented, wherever appropriate, by the author's own
evaluative comments ranging from brief notes to discussions ranging over several pages. [11] The basis
of the work is therefore a comprehensive bibliography (pp.15--66) which is followed by 16 analytical sections, among which the longest and most important cover such topics as
"Theorien zum Ursprung der Brāhmī" (6), "Archäeologische Argumente" (8), "Literarische Zeugnisse für Schrift" (9), and "Berichte
von Ausländern zur Existenz von Schrift" (11).

The "Forschungsbericht" format of Falk's book is on the whole successful, though it inevitably has both advantages and disadvantages. Among the latter, Falk's
intention to present a comprehensive coverage of all literature ("versuchte ich alle Publikationen zu erfassen, die den Umständen der Einführing der Schrift in Indien gewidmet
sind," p.12) leads him to include, not only in the bibliography but also in the analytic text, numerous specimens of the sort of pseudo-scholarship which is all too well represented
in this field. While Falk generally manages to dispose of such amateurish efforts concisely and effectively (see e.g. pp. 144--7 and 157--60), considerable space might have been saved simply
by skipping over the chaff and concentrating on serious publications; we hardly need another discussion of Cunningham's theory of the hieroglyphic origin of Brāhmī (p.143) or
Shamasastry's tantric theories (p.144). Nonetheless, since Falk's main purpose was to set the record straight, the comprehensive approach is justifiable. As he notes (p.11),
the literature on the subject of the origins of writing in India (as on many other subjects) is full of misattributions, misinterpretations, and simple ignorance of previous works; see, for
example, pp.126--7, showing how Diringer's incorrect accounts of opinions on the Indian scripts have found their way into the specialist literature. Unlike most previous writers on
this topic, Falk has obviously taken the trouble to locate, read and understand all of the literature, rather than relying on what others have said about it, and thus has succeeded in
authoritatively clarifying, for once and for all, who said what and when. Just for this, we are much indebted to him.

In his review of evidence for the antiquity of writing in historical India, Falk follows, as noted above, the positions of von Hinüber in broad outline though not in all details. Thus he agrees
with von Hinüber that "Megasthenes sagt klar und eindeutig, daß in Mâgadha [sic] zu seiner Zeit Schrift ganz allgemein nicht in Gebrauch war" (p.293), and that the writing
observed by Nearchos in India was probably Aramaic (p.290). Likewise, he takes the Pāṇini's lipi to refer to Aramaic, concluding that "Für eine eigene, einheimische
Schrift zu seiner Zeit gibt es aber keinerlei Anhaltspunkte" (pp.258--9). But he does not share von Hinüber's doubts, cited above, as to whether lipi in Pāṇin
refers to writing at all. Similarly, in his discussion of alleged early references to writing in the Pali Vinaya, he comes to the same basic conclusion, namely negative, as von Hinüber, but
his specific interpretations often differ. The term likhitako coro , for example, was explained by the latter (p.38) as referring to a thief identified by a picture, rather than a
written document such as an arrest warrant; Falk, however, quite plausibly suggests (pp.276--7) that the phrase alludes to a branded or otherwise physically "marked" thief.
And while von Hinüber (pp.39--40) does accept the expression lekhaṃ chindati as one of the authentic references to writing in the Vinaya but dismisses it as relatively late, Falk
disagrees, cautiously suggesting (p.279) that it may refer to an ascetic practice of cutting off pieces of one's own flesh.

Regardless of the differences in the details of their interpretation of particular passages, Falk is in general agreement with von Hinüber as well as with Goyal and other recent writers that
most if not all of the terms and passages in early Indian literature and in the writings of foreign observers which were cited by Bühler et al. in support an early date of origin for the
Indian scripts in fact prove no such thing. Their arguments are indeed persuasive, but not completely decisive. For instance, there is no concrete evidence that the writing referred to by
observers such as Nearchos and Pāṇinin northwestern India in and around the 4th century was Aramaic, rather than Indian, i.e. Kharoṣṭhī; here von Hinüber (quoted above) has wisely left
the door open by allowing for the possibility of a "very early form" of Kharoṣṭhī, while Falk, perhaps a little rashly, excludes this possibility. For Kharoṣṭhī,
according to Falk, must have been created at one stroke at some later not before 325 BC (p.104). The argument for this date is based on the theory that the new script could only have
originated when the professional monopoly of the Aramaic scribe-bureaucrats of the Achaemenian empire (cf. pp.78--81) had broken down in the wake of the Greek conquest. While the introduction
of social and economic considerations into the discussion of the origin of Indian scripts is a welcome addition, this particular argument is speculative at best and hardly constitutes firm
grounds for a late date for Kharoṣṭhī. The stronger argument for this position is that we have no specimen of the script before the time of Ashoka, nor any direct evidence of intermediate
stages in its development; but of course this does not mean that such earlier forms did not exist, only that, if they did exist, they have not survived, presumably because they were not
employed for monumental purposes before Ashoka.

Likewise, Falk's conclusion (p.103) that Kharoṣṭhī was a conscious creation loosely modelled on Aramaic, rather than the product of a gradual evolution and differentiation from it, is
intriguing and at least partly original, but by no means immune to objections. The most important of these, which Falk himself anticipates, is that in several cases Kharoṣṭhī characters have
different phonetic values from the Aramaic letters that they most closely resemble in shape (e.g. Aramaic ¤ pe / Kharoṣṭhī ¤ a ). This problem he attributes to a
hypothetical situation in which the inventor of Kharoṣṭhī was familiar with, but did not actually know, Aramaic script: "jemand die Kharoṣṭhī entwickelt hat, dem man zwar einmal
die Funktionsweise und die Lautwerte der aramäischen Zeichen erklärt hatte, der sich die Erklärungen aber nur teilweise richtig merkte und deshalb später einige Zeichen neu bewertete and
andere neu entwarf. Nur ein Entwickler ohne profunde Kenntnis der aramäischen Schrift würde so gro.szügig mit dem Vorbild umgehen" (p.103). I must confess that I find that explanation
unconvincing, all the more so in view of Falk's emphasis elsewhere on the important role and wide usage of Aramaic, now so well attested by the Ashokan Aramaic inscriptions, in the
eastern regions of the Achaemenian empire. Even if we accept that Aramaic was something of a guild monopoly, its basic syllabary is so simple and straightforward that it is hard to imagine
that someone clever enough to invent Kharoṣṭhī could have so badly misunderstood it. Hence I am still inclined to accept Bühler's principle of deriving the individual characters of
Kharoṣṭhī from the phonetically corresponding Aramaic consonants. For the results of the application of this principle, if inevitably not entirely satisfactory, are on the whole successful
and persuasive, far more so than in the case of Brāhmī. Bühler's explanations of the alterations of individual Aramaic prototypes into the Kharoṣṭhī ak.sara s on the grounds
of reasonably consistent principles of inversion, reversal, and differentiation still seem distinctly preferable to invoking the deus ex machina of an ignorant genius inventing
Kharoṣṭhī out of a vague acquaintance with Aramaic script.

Even more important and thought-provoking are Falk's theories on the origin of Brāhmī. He argues vehemently and not unconvincingly against the existence of Brāhmī before Ashoka. His
comprehensive review (Ch. 8, pp.177--239) of the archaeological, i.e. epigraphic and numismatic evidence confirms the recent trend of opinion, developed by such authorities D.C. Sircar and
A.H. Dani, according to which none of the several early documents such as the Piprâwâ reliquary inscription, the Sohgaurâ bronze plaque, and Mahâsthân stone inscription which had in the past
been presented as pre-Ashokan in date can in fact be proven to be so. Another strong argument in favor of an Ashokan origin for Brāhmī is the formal one adduced by Goyal and others and
endorsed by Falk (pp.164--5), which proposes that the simple and symmetrical geometric forms which predominate in early Brāhmī (e.g. ¤ .tha and ¤ ka ) are indicative of a
recent origin and an arbitrary creation. Falk thus concludes (Schluß, pp.337--9), like Müller, Goyal, and von Hinüber before him, that Brāhmī was a conscious creation of the Mauryan period,
probably designed during the reign of Ashoka for the express purpose of the monumental presentation of his edicts. This new script was designed, according to Falk, primarily on the systemic
model of Kharoṣṭhī, but with significant input, especially as far as the overall monumental ductus (cf. p.82 and 111) and the left-to right direction was concerned, from Greek. Since both of
these latter scripts are ultimately derived from Phoenician (via its derivative Aramaic in the case of Kharoṣṭhī), Brāhmī in Falk's view is ultimately an Indian adaptation of Semitic
scripts. [12]

However, Falk does not attempt to work out in full detail the derivations of the individual characters of Brāhmī from their presumptive prototypes, as Bühler (following the lead of Albrecht
Weber [13] ) and others have in the past attempted to do, albeit with limited success. He does stress
the anomalous form of Brāhmī ¤ tha , which not only resembles the Greek theta (¤) in form and phonetic value but also is the only Brāhmī letter, except for initial i
( ¤) that consists of more than one unconnected stroke: "Das heißt, man opferte in der Brāhmī das sonst überall erkennbare Prinzip von der graphischen Einheit jedes Zeichens im Rahmen
einer Übernahme" (p.111). I do not find this to be a particularly cogent argument, since it is hard to know exactly what the nature and significance of the alleged "Prinzip
von der graphischen Einheit" is, especially when not one but two Brāhmī characters violate it. By the same logic Greek, the script should have a similar principle, also with two
exceptions (¤ theta and ¤ xi ), but it is hard to see any special significance in this. This is not to deny the striking similarity between theta and Brāhmī
tha , or even the possibility that that the former influenced the formation of the latter, especially since this is one of the Brāhmī characters for which it is difficult to find a
suitable prototype in late Aramaic (although similar shapes are available in earlier Semitic scripts). But I doubt whether this single example deserves the special significance attributed to
it by Falk, which perhaps overemphasizes the influence of Greek on Brāhmī.

Much the same can be said about his analysis of the vocalization system on Brāhmī. That the basic system of indication of post-consonantal vowels by diacritic marking was originally developed
in and adapted from Kharoṣṭhī seems well established. But Falk's suggestion (pp.111, 339) that the introduction into Brāhmī of distinct diacritics for short and long vowels was
influenced by the model of Greek script is doubtful, since the notation of vowel quantity in Greek operates on entirely different principles. Whereas Greek uses distinct alphabetic characters,
mostly derived from Semitic consonants, to represent, incompletely and inconsistently, short and long vowel pairs, Brāhmī has a complete and regular set of matched short/long pairs of
post-consonantal diacritic signs. Thus at best one might suggest that Greek provided an example or inspiration for the development of a system of notation of vowel quantity. But I hardly see
the necessity for even this much, since, given their well-established tradition of phonetic analysis, the Indians could certainly have thought of this on their own. So here again, the weight
of Greek influence seems to be over-emphasized.

A further problem in deriving Brāhmī as a composite of Greek and Kharoṣṭhī are the several Brāhmī characters which are more readily explained by reference to the presumptive Aramaic prototype
of Kharoṣṭhī than to the Kharoṣṭhī (or Greek) characters themselves. Among these are Brāhmī ¤ ha , which can reasonably be derived (by inversion) from an Aramaic ¤ he ,
but hardly from Kharoṣṭhī ¤ ha , and ¤ ta from Aramaic ¤ taw , but not Kharoṣṭhī ¤ ta ; several other such examples could be cited. What this boils down
to is the old problem that each of the proposed prototypes for Brāhmī, viz., Kharoṣṭhī, Aramaic, Phoenician, and Greek, can provide models for some of its characters, but no one of them can
explain all of them; to do so, one must revert to rather far-fetched combined derivations of the sort proposed by Halévy (see n.). Falk does not address these problems head on, and perhaps
would be inclined to dismiss them, as have some others, on the grounds that the characters of Brāhmī were essentially arbitrary creations, with a general input from Greek and Kharoṣṭhī but
not systematically patterned on either of them. This too is not impossible, but still the resemblance of many of the Brāhmī characters to phonetically cognate ones in one or the other scripts
is troubling. It may not ever be possible to fully establish the derivations of each Brāhmī character, and this was clearly not Falk's intention, but I cannot help feeling that in this
regard he has over-estimated the role of Greek at the expense of Aramaic.

All of the above discussion assumes that Brāhmī is in fact a derived script, created from or loosely modeled on one or more Semitic or Semiticderived scripts. While it is true that the
historical and geographical circumstances point strongly in this direction, it must be remembered that this point of view is not at all widely accepted in South Asia, and should not be taken
for granted; with his assumption of a Semitic derivation and especially his strong emphasis on the role of Greek, Falk may leave himself open to charges of a Eurocentric viewpoint. Such
questions of indigenous development versus borrowing from outside will also arise in connection with Falk's analysis of the numerical notation system of Brāhmī. Because the use of
distinct signs in Brāhmī for each of the digits (1 to 9) and the decades (10 to 90) is "eine radikale Abkehr vom semitischen System" (p.175), he looks elsewhere for its
prototype and finds a similar system in early Chinese numerals, which he thinks could have been brought to India by Chinese merchants travelling to Gandhâra in ancient times. But I find it
hard to accept archaeological evidence of Chinese wares in the Swat Valley in the early 2nd millennium BC (ibid.) as any sort of evidence for a possible borrowing of a system of numerical
notation. It is surprising that Falk does not take into serious consideration the striking similarities, discussed by Bühler and others, not only in system but also (unlike Chinese) in the
actual form of several of the numerical signs, between Brāhmī and heiratic and demotic Egyptian. Though I am not convinced that the Brāhmī characters are in fact borrowed from Egyptian, this
seems a far more plausible possibility than China. Thus while it is not strictly correct, as Falk states, that "Die enzige Alternative zu einem chinesischen Einfluß auf die
BrāhmīZahlzeichen...ist der Annahme einer Neuschöpfung in Indien mit zufälliger Parallität" (p.175), the possibility of an indigenous origin should be seriously considered. Since
numerical signs, unlike phonetic signs, are not wholly arbitrary but rather tend to develop by cursive simplification from collocations of counting strokes, coincidental similarities in their
forms are not nearly as unlikely as it might seem at first glance. In the case of the Egyptian systems, we have the sufficient materials to see how the separate hieratic decade signs
originally developed from the cursive writing of additive groups of the single hieroglyphic sign for 10. A similar system could well have developed separately in India, independent from the
influence of any outside system and even apart from the development of linguistic writing (which would explain the persistent problems in establishing phonetic or systemic linkages between
early Brāhmī and the early numerical system associated with it, cf. Falk, pp.169--73). Certainly we do not need to look all the way to China.

Such disagreements over details notwithstanding, the studies discussed in this review are works of high scholarly quality which will be of lasting impact and utility. Indeed, it is no
exaggeration to say that these authors, especially Falk, have raised the level of discussion of the old problems of early literacy and the origin of the scripts in ancient India to an entirely
new level. All of them have succeeded in casting off the old prejudices and lingering effects of Bühler's outdated arguments, and Falk in particular has brought a wealth of new
information and erudition to the field. In particular, he has for the first time looked seriously from a modern viewpoint at the Iranian, Semitic, and Hellenistic background to developments in
Mauryan India, while also objectively and perceptively re-evaluating the entire corpus of Indological and classical data. Thus while I disagree on several secondary points of interpretation
and method, and while I would maintain that much still remains to be done, particularly with regard to a detailed re-examination of the development of the individual characters of Brāhmī, I
find myself more convinced than ever by Falk's arguments, bolstered by those of von Hinüber, Goyal, and Fussman, for a late origin of Brāhmī in the Mauryan, and probably the Ashokan
period. [14] In the light of new evidence such as the Aramaic inscriptions of Ashoka and the
reinterpretation of the old, faulty claims for evidence of early writing, it must now be admitted that, as long as one agrees to give preference to the empirical evidence, there is every
reason to think that Brāhmī did not exist before the 3rd century BC, and that it was created then on the basis of a loose adaptation of one or more pre-existent Semitic scripts, with
Kharoṣṭhī playing at least a partial role. Kharoṣṭhī itself almost certainly did predate Brāhmī, as argued by Falk et al., and probably dates back at least to the late 4th century, and (
contra Falk) quite possibly even before then.

One final and important problem remains. According to the position espoused in these books-- which, given the authority of their authors and the quality of their scholarship, is likely to be
hereby established as the currently prevailing point of view, at least in the west-- the heartland of India was preliterate until the 3rd century BC. But can we imagine such a state of
affairs, given what we know (admittedly not too much) of the state of society and culture in India, especially in the northeast, before this time? If we can put any trust at all in the
traditional lore of the Purāṇas and the testimony of the Pali canon, Magadha was the site of great and prosperous empires, notably that of the Nandas, decades if not centuries before the
foundation of the Mauryan dynasty in around 320 BC. Can we believe that these dynasties with their legendary riches, and the remarkable intellectual and cultural life of India in the time of
the Buddha and Mahāvīra, existed in a totally illiterate sphere? It is certainly true that intellectual activity in India has always strongly favored oral over written means of expression, and
both von Hinüber and Falk have effectively put to rest the already discredited skepticism about the possibility of oral composition and preservation of the Veda, Pāṇini's grammar,
etc. (see e.g. Falk pp.321--7). But the fact that Pāṇini did not use writing in composing the Aṣṭādhyāyī does not necessarily mean that he was illiterate (cf. Falk p.259); it may only mean
that writing was not considered an appropriate vehicle for intellectual endeavors of his kind. Even given the very different cultural role of writing in India as compared to many other ancient
civilizations, it is hard to conceive that practical affairs such as the keeping of records and accounts in a fabulously wealthy empire like that of the Nandas could have been kept in order
without any form of writing at all, or at least without some alternative system of memory-aids like the Inca quipu . Thus one is tempted to think along the lines of William Bright
(cited by Falk, p.290) of some type of writing that was "perhaps used for commercial purposes, but not for religious or legal texts." [15]

Admittedly, we have not a shred of concrete evidence for this, and it is perhaps better to stick with what we have and assume that business affairs, like cultural ones, were conducted in
pre-Mauryan Magadha simply on the basis of the highly-developed memory skills so well attested in ancient and modern India, perhaps with the assistance of a system of numerical notation such
as that hypothesized above. This, it would be hard to deny in light of the evidence that Falk, von Hinüber, et al. have laid out before us, is the most likely scenario on the grounds of the
unfortunately meager evidence that is left to us. Still, we should not fall into the trap of thinking that the last word has been spoken. Admittedly, it hardly seems likely, after all the
years of waiting, searching, and the dashing of false hopes, that some major archaeological discovery will reveal a whole new picture of the origins of writing in the Indian heartland, or
reveal a sustainable (rather than purely hypothetical) connection with the Indus script. Nevertheless, it would be unwise to rule out surprises in the future, and we should leave the door
open, as does Falk (p.340), to discoveries that could revive theories of an early development of Brāhmī. But we must also agree, if reluctantly, with his final sentence: "Zur Zeit
erscheint dieser Fall jedoch kaum zu erwarten" (p.340).

One final note: It is unfortunate that the work of Fussman in French and von Hinüber and Falk in German will not be available to a large portion of their potential audience. These works,
especially Falk's Schrift im alten Indien , are of sufficient importance and quality to merit publication in English translation in order to bring them to the wider audience
they deserve and permit them to have the influence on future discussion that they ought to.

Note 8 Here Norman (n.24) cites Fussman, "Les premieres systèmes...," p.513. His subsequent allusion to the theory of the invention of Br\={a}hm\={\i} under A'soka is
made without reference to the works of von Hinüber and Falk, which were evidently not yet in print when Norman wrote his article, though he was probably aware of their ideas on the subject.

Note 10 Fussman's ideas on these subjects will presumably be developed at greater length in his article on "Écritures indiennes," in D. Arnaud's Histoire de
l'ecriture , cited in Falk's bibliography (p.31) as "im Druck" and still not available at the time of this writing.

Note 11 The model for the structure of the book is, as the author notes (p.11), George Cardona's Pânini, a Survey of Research (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1976).

Note 12 The composite theory of the development, or invention, of Brāhmī is not, as Falk notes (p.338), entirely unprecedented. The French Semiticist J. Halévy in particular tried to establish a
composite derivation from Aramaic, Greek and Kharosthî. Falk feels it was largely he published in French that Halévy's contributions have not received the credit they deserved (p.127);
but it seems to me that it was the serious flaws in argumentation, reflecting profound misunderstandings of the Indian cultural background, as well as his intemperate tone of argumentation
(cf. p.132), rather than the language of his publications, that cost Halévy much of his credibility.

Note 14 It is not exactly correct, as Falk states, that in my review in JAOS 102 (1982), p.554 I opposed Goyal's position on the origin of Brāhmī in A'soka's time
("Gegen ihn stellten sich z.B. R. Salomon" (p.150). What I actually said was "the invention theory proposed by Goyal...is not without its merits, especially in that
it holds to the evidence (or rather, lack of evidence) as we have it... But it falls far short of full cogency for lack of both corroborative evidence and historical parallels." In
any case, this lack of corroboration and parallel has, to an large extent, been filled in by Falk.